


Another Chance

by TainaPrincess1493



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 03:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21501106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TainaPrincess1493/pseuds/TainaPrincess1493
Summary: Just another what-if/fix it.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 3
Kudos: 76





	Another Chance

Disclaimer: All characters still sadly belong to Marvel.

The thud Clint’s knees make when they hit the floor will haunt him for the rest of his existence. Beside him Banner asks where Natasha is, as if Clint would have left her behind to grab some last minute things on Vormir. He doesn’t need to hear Clint’s explanation, he knows she’s gone, but the archer still looks at him dead in the eyes as he explains. And a part of his heart dies forever, or so it feels. He goes through the motions, he keeps his head high for the rest of the team and only lets one tear escape.

They were her family and this is how they repaid her, didn’t even have time for a funeral. The world, it always needed saving, always needed something from them and Steve was so tired. He was so damned done with trying to keep the Earth standing. Because every time he helped the stupid little planet, he lost someone important to him.

First it was Bucky, then the possibility of a life with Peggy, but now... well now destiny or whatever had really done a number on him. Steve didn’t care that her sacrifice would mean bringing back half of the world’s population. Her sacrifice just meant he didn’t have her anymore. He scoffed as he ran his fingers lightly over a set of her batons in the locker rooms, what would she say knowing that the dutiful captain had lost his will to care.

Still he did what was expected of him. He fought when the time came and by some miracle, they won. Although they’d also lost. They’d lost Tony and they’d lost Natasha, and the world still required saving. The stones needed to be taken back, and logically he was the one who had to do it. He sighed even as he suited up, buckling straps on his red, white and blue suit, even as he’d have preferred wearing the black one that had matched hers so closely.

He grabbed the hammer and the case, and stood on the platform ready to be hurled back into the time and space continuum. Banner’s instructions were ringing in his ears, he knew he shouldn’t mess up time, but he couldn’t care less.

The soldier stood on that cliff face on that strange planet, the view would have been beautiful if this hadn’t been the spot where he’d lost her forever. He looked down the ravine with anger in his eyes, he hated this place. He hated this stone, and yet, he found himself hesitating when it came time to drop it. If he did, if he allowed the stone to drop from his hand then his last link to her would be truly gone.

“You are a strange man, Captain Rogers.”

Schmidt’s voice didn’t startle him, “It’s the last I have of her.”

“She is no more inside that retched thing than she is down there.”

“Then where is she?” he demanded.

“That only death and the universe know.”

“I want her back,” he said, his voice clogged with emotions that he didn’t hide from the specter behind him.

“You might get her back, you never know.”

He laughed with no mirth, “The universe has never been that kind to me or to you.”

He finally turns to look at the ghostly shape of his once great enemy. The two look hard at each other and Steve mudes on how easily he could have turned out to be just like the Skull.

“You couldn’t have. Erskine chose well when he made you his next subject.”

“Now you can read my mind?”

“I can’t. It’s easy to deduce what you might be thinking. Her sacrifice saved millions. Don’t cheapen it by holding on to something that will only bring you pain and sorrow.”

“And now you give advice too.”

“Ironic,” Schmidt says. “I’m not the man you once knew, Captain. My exile here... I’m changed and forever condemned to stay here.”

Steve nodded, and turned back to the cliff. He studied the glowing stone that sat in the middle of his hand. The color of it pulsing to a bit, almost like a heart. He closed his eyes, thinking of all the opportunities he and Natasha had missed and then gently tipped his hand, letting the soul stone fall.

A slight breeze made him open his eyes, and he sat up with a groan. He was on a lake, alone just like when he’d first gotten to this barren wasteland of a planet. He rose from the still waters and breathed in, deciding what to do, where to go. To the past with the possibility of a stolen life with Peggy or to the present to face a life without his partner. His hand was on the dimensional GPS when he heard a faint noise behind him.

She was there. Her red-blonde hair in the same braid it’d been in the last time he’d seen her, green eyes full of curiosity, “Steve, how...” she whispered and then trailed off.

He covered the distance between them in three quick strides and enveloped her in the tightest hug he could. Natasha Romanoff didn’t protest, instead she hugged him back just as tight burying her head in his chest.

“I was dead,” she whispered.

He tightened his hold on her, “If you’re asking me how you’re not dead right now you should know I have no answer. I’m just glad that you’re back.”

He pulls away from her slightly moving to set both dimensional devices to the right time when her hand stops him. He looks at her quizzically, but stops what he’s doing.

Natasha bites her lip, hesitating before looking down at her boots, “Steve, do you remember the last conversation we had at the compound, the one before this whole quest to get the stones?”

He nods, “I do.”

“Then how about we get that life?”

Steve frowned until he got the meaning behind her words, “You don’t want to go back?”

“I do, I just... I don’t want to go back to Avenging.”

Steve looks at her with understanding in his clear blue eyes, “And we don’t have to, but I have to go back and tell everyone the mission was a success. I did say five minutes.”

“With that thing on your wrists five minutes will still be five minutes in 20 years time. Let’s just... forget it.”

The soldier frowns, “Hey no, don’t do that. Tell me what you want, Tasha.”

“I don’t want to go back. Not right now. But it’s best if we do.”

Steve thinks for a moment before a plan comes to mind. She’s right, with the GPS it’ll still be five minutes no matter when he gets back.

[Time Break]

“You bring him back!” Is heard through a clearing next to a lake, and a big green figure keeps frantically working at the controls of a weird looking machine.

It all seems futile and Sam is losing whatever hope he still had left of seeing his friend, then he hears Bucky whisper his name. There’s a hunched figure on a bench down by the lake, and he has a sneaking suspicion of who it is. He approaches the old man, the old man who has the aged face of the friend he saw not five minutes ago.

Steve Rogers’ aged visage smiles at Sam. They talk and the old man hands the younger one the famous vibranium disk, “It looks good on you,” his friend’s frail voice says.

Sam shakes his hand with a smile and spots the ring the other man is wearing, “Will you tell me about her?”

Steve glances at the band on his finger and gently touches it, “Not today.” He smiles and waves at James before slowly walking away.

Sam stays, he knows that if the Captain needs him, he’ll call. In the meantime, it seems he’s got work to do.

Steve watches Sam from a little ways away, he’s far enough now that the younger man won’t notice him, “He’ll do a good job.”

“He will. And if not you’ll come back and beat him into shape,” the voice of the woman next to him is young and vibrant, full of hidden mirth.

“I’m too old for that now.”

Natasha laughs and moves her hand gently over his face. She carefully removes the photostatic veil he’d been wearing before kissing his lips, “Are you sure you don’t mind this.”

He chases her lips and kisses her a little harder, “I don’t.”

She still looks unconvinced, “This is your home.”

“No,” he says shaking his head, “you’re my home, and my family. We’ll come back, eventually. But for now, for now it’s just you and me.”

She smiles brightly up at him. They’ve tied up lose ends and she’s already let Barton know that she’s in the wind. It’s time. Time for the soldier and the spy to figure out if a life away from the fight is possible for them.

“Where do we start?” She asks.

“No idea, but wherever it is, we’ll start this new adventure together.”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m really hoping you guys won’t absolutely hate it.


End file.
